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Facebook Is Testing Out Ads Using 'Missed Calls' In India

There are over one billion people that have smartphones in the world, but roughly seven out of ten people still use feature phones. A large portion of the population in high-growth countries like India, South Africa, Mexico, Brazil, Indonesia and Nigeria use feature phones as a primary device for accessing the Internet. Over one billion people access Facebook every month across multiple mobile devices. According to internal Facebook data, a majority of the people that access the social network in many countries use feature phones, including India (66%), Indonesia (71%) and South Africa (68%). This could be a huge opportunity for advertisers so Facebook is developing a unique set of tools to access those markets.

Facebook launched the ability for advertisers to place and target ads on feature phones about a year ago. And Facebook’s ad delivery system has been optimized for low-bandwidth connections. Now Facebook is testing an advertising tool in India that involves missed calls.

In India, many people use missed calls as a workaround from the high costs of voice calls, similar to how people use collect calls in the U.S. For example, some people in India dial a number and hang up before connecting to the other person to save voice minutes. This would send a signal to a friend or family member to indicate “call me back” or “I’m outside.” I have seen this behavior first-hand during some of my visits to India. One of my friends told another friend to “leave a missed call” when they arrive rather than paying for an SMS or voice call. Some companies send recorded ads or SMSSMS messages promoting a service to people who place a missed call to capitalize on this opportunity.

Facebook is testing out an advertising unit in India that corresponds to this behavior. When a person sees an ad on Facebook, they will be able to place a “missed call” from it using a button. Mobile phone users click the button that calls the brand advertiser. The call hangs up immediately and in the return call, the person will receive branded content like ringtones, music, cricket scores and celebrity messages from the advertisers. This would not consume any airtime or data. Facebook tested this advertising strategy with brands like Garnier Men and it will be scaled with more partners in the next few months.

Another announcement Facebook made today was the addition of life-stage targeting and geo-targeting advertising in the U.S. and U.K. Life-stage targeting gives advertisers the ability to target new moms and dads, people that have started a new job and retirees. Life-stage targeting will soon be available in high-growth countries. The ability to target ads for people in specific cities were available for advertisers in high-growth countries already, but now the geo-targeting feature lets advertisers target people by state or multiple states in India without having to list multiple cities. Facebook’s advertising team is working on more geo-targeting enhancements for India, Indonesia, Nigeria, South Africa, Turkey and Latin America.

To measure the effectiveness of ads in high-growth countries, Facebook announced that it has partnered with Nielsen to serve polls to people on feature phones. The new measurement solution will provide advertisers with tools to measure brand sentiment and purchase intent. Ad recall, advertisements where the viewer remembers what was heard and seen, will also be measured by Nielsen for the first time on mobile and desktops.

Facebook is heavily focused on growth in emerging markets, which is the primary reason why it acquired WhatsApp for $19 billion. At the time of the deal, WhatsApp was claiming 419 million mobile monthly active user accounts, mostly in developing countries compared to Facebook’s 145 million, Gmail’s 123 million, Twitter'sTwitter's 54 million, and Skype’s 52 million.

During a conference call about the deal, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said that WhatsApp does not “get as much attention in the U.S. as it deserves.” WhatsApp is the primary messaging tool in certain areas of Mexico, Europe, South America, Africa, the Middle East and India. The dominant messaging service in China is Tencent’s WeChat. This past April, WhatsApp hit 500 million users. At that time, users were sharing 700 million photos and 100 million videos every single day. These numbers are likely much larger today.

Last year, Zuckerberg announced an initiative called Internet.org. Internet.org is a partnership between Facebook and six mobile phone companies that have a goal of bringing affordable Internet access to people that live in emerging markets by increasing telecommunication efficiency. Another goal for Internet.org is to make the Internet 100 times more affordable. A few months ago, Facebook hired the five-person team behind a U.K. based startup called Ascenta that builds solar-powered drones. The Ascenta team is working at Internet.org to help bring Internet to 5 billion unconnected people.

What do you think of Facebook’s “missed call” service? Do you think it sounds like a good idea to generate revenue in emerging markets? Let us know in the comments.

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